There is a level of animation that will just never match real video. Every year since NBA Jams came out with big head mode there was a push to make graphics look real. Every EA Sports, or NBA 2K whatever game tries every year…and the best they can do is make the animated movies look real (the intros, the isolated replays, etc) but the actual game play still looks average.

fair points, but if you take a step back and look at it objectively, it looks real enough. There’s more realistic than unrealistic at this point. He’s not saying 99% of people who’ve been playing video games and looking at rendered stuff their whole lives will be easily fooled, he’s just saying the technology we have now is impressive. We’ve come a long way from NES Double Dribble.

Go back and play Lakers vs Celtics and compare. We’ve just been advancing in realism each generation, obviously. The types of imagery we’re seeing in games today I would’ve never imagined was possible when I was playing John Elway’s Quarterback in 1988. Actually, in those days, when I thought about the future of realism in gaming I imagined more use of holograms – that was because, at the time, there were hologram games coming out in arcades and I couldn’t think of any other way to render lifelike images.

But look at the difference between Ghost and Goblins and The Last of Us. It’s incredible. There is a still a realism gap, of course – the Uncanny Valley is still an issue – but it’s closing fast.